Giovan Battista Carpi

(16 November 1927 - 8 March 1999, Italy)

Paperino e l'isola delle scimmie afflitte (Topolino #190, 1958)

Giovan Battista Carpi studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. Afterwards, he took courses by the painter Giovanni Piccolo. In 1945, Carpi made his debut in the comics field, with the family strip 'La Famiglia Serafini' in the weekly Faville magazine. From 1946, he cooperated on the educational magazine Lo Scolaro, and drew 'Sparagrosso, Cacciatore in Africa' for Gazzetta dei Piccoli. He settled in Milan and worked in the animation studios of the Pagot brothers for a while. He established himself as an all-round author with the comic 'Celestino al Centro della Terra', which he wrote and drew for Giornalino di Carroccio. In addition, he illustrated for several publishing houses, such as Corticelli, Tipys, Messaggerie Musicali and De Agostini.

Joe Anello

In 1953, Carpi joined the publishing house Mondadori and became a mainstay on the Disney staff. He began a steady collaboration with inker Giulio Chierchini, and together they produced numerous 'Paperino' ('Donald Duck') stories for Topolino. He became famous for the parodies he fitted in his 'Paperino' comics, like a persiflage on Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables'. At first strongly inspired by the American artists, Carpi soon seveloped a personal style, that has been an inspiration to many other artists. Together with Elisa Penna and Guido Martina, he created one of the most enduring Donald Duck spin-offs in Italian comics, namely 'Paperinik', a.k.a. 'The Duck Avenger'. It features Donald fighting crime at night as a masked superhero. Originally the creators imagined him as a parody of Angela and Luciana Giussani's 'Diabolik', but as soon as the series became popular they made him more into a general superhero character. The first story debuted as a two-parter on 8 June 1969 and was followed by the second part on 15 June. New stories starring 'Paperinik' are still published to this day in Italy.

Giovan Carpi was in charge of the Italian Disney University, created to train the Italian Disney artists.

While working for Disney, he continued to draw for other publishers. He was present at the publishing house Bianconi with 'Soldino' and 'Nonna Abelarda'. He drew 'Bertoldo' for publisher Gino Sansoni in 1963, as well as several stories with 'Fix und Foxi' for the German Kauka Verlag between 1965 and 1966. Also for Mondadori, he illustrated stories with 'Pixi e Dixi' and 'Yoghi' in Braccobaldo (late 1960s). One of his final creations was 'Gargantua', which appeared in Smack magazine from 1979.